different between aposiopesis vs prosiopesis

English

Etymology

From Latin aposiopesis, from Ancient Greek ??????????? (aposi?p?sis), from ????????? (aposi?pá?, “be silent”), from ??? (apó, “off, from”) + ?????? (si?pá?, “to be silent”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æp?sa???pi?s?s/
• Hyphenation: apo?si?o?pe?sis

Noun

aposiopesis (countable and uncountable, plural aposiopeses)

1. (rhetoric) An abrupt breaking-off in speech, often indicated in print using an ellipsis (…) or an em dash (—).

   Synonym: (obsolete) reticence

   • 1938, Samuel Beckett, Murphy, London: George Routledge & Sons, OCLC 939632162; republished New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1957, OCLC 855435111, page 164:

     “Have fire in this garret before night or—” / He stopped because he could not go on. It was an aposiopesis of the purest kind.

Hypernyms

• brachylogy

Translations

See also

• adynaton
• anapodoton
• ellipsis
• or else

References

• Silva Rhetoricae

Further reading

• aposiopesis at OneLook Dictionary Search
• aposiopesis on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

English

Etymology

Coined in 1917 by the Danish linguist Jens Otto Harry Jespersen: pro- (“before”) (from the Ancient Greek preposition ??? (pró)) + ???????? (si?p?sis, “taciturnity”) (from ?????? (si?pá?, “to be silent”)) + -??? (-sis), (-sis, suffix forming nouns of action).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: pr?s'??p??s?s, pr?'s??p??s?s, IPA^(key): /?p??s????pi?s?s/ /?p??s???pi?s?s/
• (General American) enPR: pr?s'i?pi?s?s, IPA^(key): /?p??sio??pis?s/
• Rhymes: -i?s?s
• Hyphenation: pros?i?o?pe?sis

Noun

prosiopesis (countable and uncountable, plural prosiopeses)

1. (grammar) Ellipsis of the beginning of a grammatical construction, common in informal speech and spontaneous written electronic communication, frequently occurring in stock phrases and interjections.
   • 2003, David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, page 159 (5th Ed.; Wiley–Blackwell; ?ISBN, 9780631226642)

     Traditional rhetoric was much concerned with the phenomenon of elision, because of the implications for constructing well-formed metrical lines, which would scan well. In rhetorical terminology, an elision in word-initial position was known as aphaeresis or prosiopesis, in word-medial position as syncope, and in word-final position as apocope. A similar classification was made for the opposite of elision, intrusion.

Coordinate terms

• (forms of word-elision): (from word-final position) apocope, aposiopesis; (from word-medial position) syncope, *synsiopesis

Related terms

• prosiopetic (rare)

References